A Case for Consumer Social Responsibility (CnSR): Including a Selected Review of Consumer Ethics/Social Responsibility Research

The literature is replete with articles emphasizing the importance of corporate social responsibility. However, few, if any, of these articles discuss the role of the consumer in achieving corporate social responsibility. It is the premise of the current paper that it may be difficult for corporate social responsibility to succeed without the assistance of consumers. That is, for corporate social responsibility to flourish, it needs to be accompanied by consumer social responsibility (CnSR). This paper examines this proposition, makes the distinction between consumer ethics and CnSR, and presents research in these two expanding areas of inquiry, examining literature which supports the role of CnSR in complementing corporate social responsibility.